Digital Home

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: changing uses paving the way for the digital home

2. Factors shaping the digital home

• 2.1. Digitised content and devices
• 2.2. New storage platforms, providing alternatives to video streams
• 2.3. Growing internet use in the home
• 2.4. New uses: personalisation, portability, continuity
• 2.5. Are users ready?
• 2.6. Summary: the digital home' s driving forces

3. Key elements of the digital home

• 3.1. The devices
  • 3.1.1. The "boxes"
  • 3.1.2. The PVR
  • 3.1.3. The Media Centre
  • 3.1.4. The PC
  • 3.1.5. The video game console
  • 3.1.6. Portable media players
  • 3.1.7. DVD player-recorders equipped with a hard drive
  • 3.1.8. Mobile handsets
  • 3.1.9. Growth of media equipment rates in French households between 2004 and 2006
• 3.2. Removable storage solutions
  • 3.2.1. Flash memory
  • 3.2.2. External hard drives
  • 3.2.3. Online storage
• 3.3. Network technologies
  • 3.3.1. Wi-Fi
  • 3.3.2. PLC
  • 3.3.3. Bluetooth
  • 3.3.4. Cables
• 3.4. DRM
• 3.5. Standardisation bodies
  • 3.5.1. The DLNA
  • 3.5.2. The UPnP forum

4. Digital home solutions

• 4.1. What hub for the digital home?
• 4.2. The players' marketing strategies
• 4.3. The Home Gateway: ISPs' model
  • 4.3.1. Home Gateway initiative
  • 4.3.2. Thomson' s Home Gateway
  • 4.3.3. France Telecom' s vision
  • 4.3.4. Free' s vision
  • 4.3.5. The Sky digital home
  • 4.3.6. Home Gateway, STB manufacturer: Pace micro
• 4.4. The online digital home
• 4.5. The Microsoft digital home
• 4.6. The Apple digital home
• 4.7. The CE digital home
• 4.8. The Media Centre-based digital home
• 4.9. The portable device at the heart of the digital home
• 4.10. Electrical equipment suppliers' digital home
• 4.11. Open source digital home solutions
• 4.12. Open source Media Centres
• 4.13. Embedded Linux OS

5. Factors shaping the digital home

• 5.1. Fragmented consumption patterns: advantage PC?
• 5.2. Individual vs. collective consumption
• 5.3. Universal device, core device?
• 5.4. What type of storage?
  • 5.4.1. Centralised or distributed storage?
  • 5.4.2. Local or online storage?
• 5.5. Controlling the digital home
  • 5.5.1. Interoperability and DRM
  • 5.5.2. Proprietary storage
  • 5.5.3. The standardisation challenge
  • 5.5.4. The content industry' s reticence
• 5.6. Profit centre or form of leverage?

6. Development scenarios

• 6.1. Scenario 1: Device-centric configuration
  • 6.1.1. The PC-centric digital home
  • 6.1.2. The TV-centric digital home
• 6.2. Scenario 2: The user-centric digital home
  • 6.2.1. The "homemade" user-centric digital home
  • 6.2.2. A seamless user-centric digital home
• 6.3. Scenario 3: A network-centric digital home
  • 6.3.1. The online network-centric digital home
• 6.4. A local-network-centric digital home

7. Conclusion

Figures & tables

• Figure 1: Digital terminal take-up in French households
• Figure 2: Growth of the broadband subscriber base by geographical zone
• Figure 3: Growth of broadband penetration by geographical zone
• Figure 4: Broadband penetration in French households in 2005
• Figure 5: Average weekly screen time in French households
• Figure 6: The boxes' place in the home
• Figure 7: PVR use and TV networking in French households
• Figure 8: Annual Sales: Media Server Form Factors
• Figure 9: PC equipment rate in French households
• Figure 10: Home console equipment rate in French households
• Figure 11: Equipment rate in the US for digital media players with a hard drive
• Figure 12: Growth of portable MP3 player equipment in French households
• Figure 13: Type of MP3 players equipping French households (% of households)
• Figure 14: Standard DVD player equipment rate in French households
• Figure 15: DVD player equipment rate in French households, by type of device
• Figure 16: World mobile handset market, in volume
• Figure 17: Growth outlook for the world 3G handset market(1)
• Figure 18: How a DMA can be used in the home
• Figure 19: Rate of French households' transition to the digital home
• Figure 20: A home network using PLC, based on an ADSL internet connection
• Figure 21: Evolution of the players' digital home offers
• Figure 22: Configuration of a typical PC-centric digital home
• Figure 23: Configuration of a typical TV-centric digital home
• Figure 24: Configuration of a typical "homemade" digital home
• Figure 25: Example of a seamless Windows digital home configuration
• Figure 26: Configuration for a typical network-centric online digital home
• Figure 27: Configuration of a typical local-network-centric digital home
• Figure 28: The different digital home configurations
• Figure 29: The digital home ecosystem
• Table 1: Network digitisation
• Table 2: Average number of devices in equipped French households
• Table 3: Access speeds offered by some of the leading broadband access providers in Europe, and the US (May 2005)
• Table 4: French households' use of portable MP3 players as music servers
• Table 5: Ways that French households watch video files stored on a PC
• Table 6: Ways that French households listen to music files stored on their PC
• Table 7: The digital home' s driving forces
• Table 8: PC equipment rates by geographical zone
• Table 9: Breakdown of the world home console base by brand, in 2005
• Table 10: Growth of media equipment levels in French households between 2004 and 2006
• Table 11: Characteristics of 802.11.
• Table 12: Characteristics of PLC.
• Table 13: Characteristics of Bluetooth
• Table 14: Leading DRM systems
• Table 15: Comparison of player strategies
• Table 16: Digital home development scenarios: overview